Election explainer · City Hall
Ken Sim made 93 campaign promises in 2022. Here’s a scorecard on nine of them
Daily Hive checked nine of ABC’s 2022 pledges against the record. One is done, one is done as redefined, and the tax freeze didn’t survive the first budget.
Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver won a landslide in 2022 on a 93-point platform, most of it aimed at public safety, mental health and getting housing built faster. Four years later, ABC hadn’t yet published its 2026 platform when this was checked, so before that reveal, it’s worth checking the last one against what actually happened.
Daily Hive checked nine of the 93 promises against City, health-authority and campaign records, published September 16, 2026. We’ve pulled the same nine into a table, with the promise, what happened, and the question we’d still ask. Daily Hive’s full review
The scorecard
| 2022 promise | What happened by September 2026 | Still open |
|---|---|---|
| Hire 100 new police officers and 100 mental-health nurses, expanding the Car 87/88 model, without a tax increase. | ABC hit the 100-officer target. The nurse target was revised to roughly 57 mental-health workers across new teams, including the Indigenous Crisis Response Team and the Mobile De-escalation Team. Vancouver Coastal Health would not say how many were nurses specifically. | Whether the promise was 100 nurses or roughly half that in a mixed team, and whether “without a tax increase” survived the tax record below. |
| Double the number of co-op housing units within four years, from about 6,000 toward about 12,000. | The City reports 402 co-op units completed, 237 under construction and 112 approved since November 2022. The Co-operative Housing Federation of B.C. counts a net increase of 334 units. | The Federation’s own CEO called the doubling promise unrealistic for any municipality to deliver alone, since it depends on senior-government funding the City doesn’t control. |
| Cut permit approval times to a “3x3x3x1” standard: three days for renovations, three weeks for single-family homes, three months for mid-rise, one year for high-rises. | 92 per cent of simple renovation permits now clear in three days. Single-family approvals fell from 250 to 160 days, against a 21-day target. Mid-rise approvals fell from 18.1 to 9.8 months, against a three-month target. High-rise times are down about 10 per cent. | Every category is faster, and every category still misses its own target, in some cases by months. |
| No platform commitment on the City budget, but Sim campaigned against Kennedy Stewart’s 23.25 per cent tax increase over the prior term. | Property taxes rose 22.1 per cent across Sim’s term, including a 10.7 per cent increase in 2023 for police funding, reserves and infrastructure. ABC says the budget now holds at zero per cent for a second straight year. | Whether two zero per cent years and a large first-term run-up nets out better than the tax record ABC campaigned against. |
| Create a “Night Mayor” to advocate for the night-time economy. | The position was never created. ABC points to the Granville Pedestrian Zone and hosting FIFA World Cup matches as evidence of downtown investment instead. | A pedestrian zone and a global tournament aren’t an ongoing advocate for bars, venues and late-night business, which was the actual promise. |
| Invest in more public washrooms, showers and water fountains, without a numeric target. | The City adopted a washroom-access framework in January 2026 focused on smart sensors, automated locks and partnerships with businesses and agencies. Vancouver currently has 165 public washrooms. | ABC never set a baseline or target, so there’s no promised number to hold it to, unlike Stewart’s specific 50-washroom pledge in 2022. |
| Deliver 5,000 new daycare spaces in the first term. | The City says more than 2,000 spaces have become operational since 2022, with 743 more approved by Council. Vancouver’s childcare gap is currently about 6,700 spaces, meeting roughly half of demand. | The term is over and the target was missed by about 3,000 spaces, even before counting spaces that are approved but not yet built. |
| Complete an Official Community Plan by the end of the first term. | Vancouver adopted its first citywide Official Development Plan in March 2026, a legally binding land-use framework for future growth. | This is the clearest promise kept on the list, delivered in the final months of the term. |
| Plant 100,000 additional trees in the first four years. | The City counted a net increase of just 257 trees from 2023 to 2025: 7,725 planted against 7,468 removed. Comparable 2022 data isn’t available, and 2026 figures aren’t final. | Even generously assuming a strong 2022 and 2026, the pace so far isn’t close to 100,000. |
What this means heading into round two
One promise, the Official Development Plan, is done. One, the 100 police officers, is done as stated, with the nurse half of the same promise redefined downward along the way. The rest are either behind their own published targets or never had a target specific enough to grade cleanly.
ABC told Daily Hive its “platform targets are aspirational,” and pointed to “foundational investments” that set up the zero per cent tax years. That’s a fair defence of a first term spent stabilizing a budget. It’s also a different claim than the specific, numbered promises the party campaigned on in 2022.
ABC was due to release its 2026 platform on Monday, September 21. We’ll be checking the new promises against this record, not just against each other. Read the full election guide · Explore Vancouver Election 2026 · Send us a promise we should be tracking
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